This reporter took the last joyride ever down the north end of the old Haul Road last week. A breathtaking trip it was. Construction crews had freshly unearthed nearly three miles of continuous road, making possible a spectacular oceanfront drive south from Ten Mile Bridge.
The day of my ride, crews were in the process of scraping the hard road surface away and hauling it to the retired quarry at Big River, east of Mendocino.
The excavated old road was still wide enough for two big gravel trucks to pass on and to move pretty fast along. The road had no holes and could still be driven at virtually any speed. And it was every bit the world class vista that I remember from the mid-1980s, when I rode from Ward Avenue to Ten Mile Bridge on a bicycle, with only two short breaks in the road then.
Since that trip last week, the hard part of the road has been eliminated, due to very fast work by the contractor, Hanford Applied Restoration and Conservation (ARC). The project”s $725,000 estimated cost is now up to $875,000, partly because of extensive public opposition and a three-tiered appeals process State Parks fought through.
State Parks is removing the continuous 2.7 miles of road I drove on, plus two very small pieces between the end of that road and Ward Avenue. The project does not impact the Ward Avenue area nor the bit from Ten Mile Bridge to the sea.
Off to a good start
Loaded with controversy and community opposition before it started, the project has been blessed with good news since it actually started, beginning with the blessing of the otherwise unfortunate dry weather.
Another huge plus was that Hanford ARC has equipment with Army tank style half-tracks. That meant there did not need to be the big effort to build a stone bridge across the sand, as the original proposal said. This reduces feared environmental harm greatly.
The next good news was that the World War II era road surface seems to have no asphalt or petroleum-based products in it. That meant the material and the process of removing it are much less toxic than feared.
Another big plus is that the Smith Ranch, located just east of the Ten Mile Bridge, is taking much of the material as fill, greatly reducing the trucking on public roads and the associated environmental costs. Many loads are also going to a property in the vicinity of The Purple Rose.
About 7,000 yards of the hard surface will go to the Big River quarry, said Renee Pasquinelli, senior environmental scientist for State Parks.
State Parks used local jobs as part of the selling point for the project to a reluctant public. Pasquinelli said there were many local contractors at the bidders” conference, viewing the site and asking questions.
It”s clear from the site why they had no chance against Hanford ARC, which specializes in projects just like this one, project superintendent Steve Watson said. The ARC crews” experience shows in its precise and fast moving work.
Pasquinelli said State Parks then solicited local contractors to put in bids as subcontractors and had promising conversations. Ultimately, no local bids were put in, she said.
Dunes restoration
While the breathtaking oceanfront road certainly was a loss of any real access for walkers and bicyclists to an unparalleled scenic wonderland, it is no less incredible as a fragile and unique wilderness. The Ten Mile Dunes Preserve, which is the area north beyond Ward Avenue, has many rare plant species, one of which is not found anywhere else.
The California Coastal Commission required that State Parks also remove the incredibly weathered and mostly buried continuous fence (called peeler poles) that stretched along the old road, providing much more scenic qualities than any real fencing. Those were cut off at ground level and had to be driven to Ukiah for special disposal because they are classified as polluted. Local Parks Superintendent Loren Rex said even modern treated lumber has the same classification.
Snowy plover
State Parks claims that a prime beneficiary of the road removal will be the snowy plover, a small bird which is now blocked from traveling inland by the barrier the road has made.
Just one plover nest was found within Ten Mile Dunes last year, which was one more than the year before. Since this reporter wouldn”t know a plover if he saw one, it was impossible to verify State Parks claim that although even a remote glimpse of dogs scares the plover away, gigantic heavy equipment crashing, banging, scraping and craning does not.
“The good news is that the plovers do not seem to be disturbed by the road deconstruction activities and are behaving normally on the beach,” said Pasquinelli.
Plover are able to nest in other areas and visit MacKerricher State Park, although numbers of the little birds are always small.
Ravens, which prey on plover eggs, are ubiquitous. MacKerricher State Park also has thousands of raccoons, native silver fox, invasive red fox, feral cats, seagulls, hawks, osprey and even more critters that both prey on the plover and have increased since prehistoric times. Ravens, although native to the area, have multiplied 100-fold statewide and benefit from human activity.
Tribal monitors
Balance has been lost. While State Parks is doing this project in an effort to restore the balance, it remains to be seen how this works in a drastically changed environment. The scientific community believes that invasive species must be battled and natives restored to maintain biodiversity and its remnants. But are humans invasive to the preserve?
One study showed that Native Americans helped keep local aquatic species in balance for centuries, while never driving any to extinction.
Two Native American tribal monitors are constantly on site, paid by State Parks, along with their own observers for threatened species including the plover, the Globose Dune Beetle and the Shoulderband Snail.
Evidence of historic Native Americans is as visible as the ravens in MacKerricher, seen in the strata as crustacean and mollusk shell bits and occasionally pottery.
Walking up the beach from the south, Pasquinelli and this reporter met an excited Rudy Avalos, a tribal monitor from the Sherwood Valley Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California. Leaving the site briefly, he pointed to what was in the surf not more than 50 feet from shore a pod of gray whales playing in and just outside the breakers.
Needless to say, the excitement was catching.
Eddie Knight of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians said there is so much to learn about the people who lived on these dunes. He said most of the people who lived at MacKerricher likely did so year-around, although Pomo Indians were famous for migrating inland for part of the year and living part of the year on the coast.
Coyote Valley has recently become more active in historical monitoring, Knight said. He described two recent trainings at the rancheria on how to spot and understand artifacts.
Finding an archeological site would be grounds for stopping the project and conducting a full investigation with help of the tribes. Burial sites are always a significant issue, requiring special handling. The project is not allowed to scare away the plover and must relocate rare snails or beetles if found.
Rising sea level
The road was buried 4 feet deep in the area where the sand walls are the tallest. And the dune itself in much of that area stands 7 to 10 feet high. To the layman, it seemed a bit absurd that in most places excavating several feet of sand was needed to remove a barrier. How could it be blocking anything if it was buried deep under the sand?
The answer: think more long term.
“One of the most difficult aspects of the project to communicate to the public has been sea level rise,” said Pasquinelli.
“The conditions along the shoreline are changing rapidly, so areas of the road that appeared to be nicely contained with 2 to 3 feet of sand would not remain contained. As the ocean rises, even the buried sections would become exposed and eroded, as was evident with the perched, eroded sections of haul road at the southernmost end.
“Those perched, eroded sections were hazards, both to people and plovers … they created a wall between the beach and dunes that prevented safe retreat into the foredunes if a big wave came up. Buried road sections to the north would do the same over time. So, much better to remove them now, rather than have a continuous condition of deteriorated and eroded road sections throughout,” Pasquinelli said.
Statewide, dunes have suffered a disproportionately high amount of human impact because they always occur in flat areas tempting for developers to infringe upon, as is the case in Cleone and Inglenook. Scientific reports say dunes from Northern California to Oregon have been substantially altered by European beach grass to create seaside barriers, a redesign which threatens entire isolated ecosystems, not just the plover.
The main phase of the project could be complete by the end of February. Removal of two stream crossing culverts will be done in the summer.
Hanford ARC recently did the Critical Dune Habitat Restoration project at Point Reyes National Seashore, restoring about 76 acres of native dune habitat, primarily through removal of the invasive European beach grass and iceplant. Once again, this was aimed partly at saving the snowy plover.
The old haul road was built in 1949 over a railroad grade in use since 1916 by big trucks to deliver logs from Ten Mile River to the Union Lumber Mill in Fort Bragg. State Parks began buying land to add to MacKerricher in the 1970s and completed the process by the mid-1990s. Until the late 1980s, the road provided a hard surface for bicycles or walkers all the way from the western end of Ward Avenue to Ten Mile Bridge.
